Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion (14 page)

Standard physics is somewhat split over the issue of whether a field might exist as an independent entity.
For example, most would agree that electromagnetic waves propagate as entities independent of the displaced charges that first created them.
However, the notion that an electrostatic field exists independently of the charges creating it poses a problem for theories that view electrostatic attraction as being mediated by entities such as virtual particles that are “mechanically” ejected and subsequently absorbed with a momentum recoil at the time of ejection and an equal and opposite momentum transfer at the time of absorption.

Subquantum kinetics, however, avoids this source-to-target momentum exchange requirement.
According to subquantum kinetics, charges are able to create an electric field without suffering any momentum recoil from the effect that this field might produce on other charges.
In other words, the source charges are blind to the consequences of the field they are producing.
Also, when the field’s voltage gradient accelerates these other charges, they respond with no recoil being transferred back to the field.
In the familiar case of repulsion between two like-charged particles, each particle acquires its repulsive impulse by responding to the other particle’s field with no recoil momentum being imparted to the field itself.
This reactionless electrostatic thrust idea is generally consistent with a similar idea independently advanced by French inventor Jean-Claude Lafforgue (see discussion in
chapter 4
).
The existence of electrostatic thrust in asymmetrical capacitors has been demonstrated in tests of devices developed by Lafforgue, which are reviewed in chapter 12.

As the nonlinearity and steepness of the applied voltage gradient increase, so too does the net thrust developed from the unbalanced electrostatic forces.
The magnitude of the induced electrostatic force also depends on the amount of charge stored on the capacitor’s plates.
This explains why Brown emphasized using a high-K dielectric.
For a given voltage differential, high-K dielectrics are able to store up more electric charge on their end electrodes, the amount of charge being directly proportional to their K factor.
With a greater charge load, the plates are able to generate a proportionately greater unbalanced attractive force with respect to the ambient field.
In agreement with this, the “Electrohydrodynamics” report states that under vacuum, the thrust on the triarcuate electrode was observed to increase in direct proportion to the K of the dielectric, that is, in proportion to the stored charge; recall the previous section.

Increasing the voltage across the dielectric would also cause the dielectric to store more charge because its ability to store charge is directly proportional to the applied voltage differential.
At the same time, the higher voltage would increase the electric potential gradient across the capacitor and thereby augment the inward attractive force acting on each of its electrodes.
Hence, for a given field geometry, a given increase in voltage should produce a far greater increase in thrust.
Indeed, Brown found that the thrust on his saucer varied as the square or cube of voltage.

When Brown’s electrokinetic apparatus was operated in an atmosphere, ionic forces also played a role, although in view of the results of the vacuum chamber tests described in the “Electrohydrodynamics” report, such forces could not have been very significant.
Positive ions tended to be emitted on the underside of the canopy, the side facing the negative electrode, and they produced an upward-repelling force on the positive charges in the canopy.
Also, negative ions emitted from the lower, negative electrode produced a negative space charge located somewhat above this electrode.
This repelled the negative charges in that electrode, producing a force directed inward toward the electrode and angled downward.
It is difficult to say whether the force produced by the upward-repelling positive ionic charges prevailed over the force produced by the downward-repelling negative ionic charges to produce a net upward thrust.
Ionic forces appear to be more important in understanding the operation of the lifter devices that are described in chapter 12.

To summarize, electrostatic forces on the plates of a capacitor become unbalanced when the electric field intensity varies nonlinearly with distance between the plates.
The net thrust increases as the field nonlinearity increases in accordance with the teachings of Brown’s patent.

3.4 • AC FIELDS

Careful reading of Brown’s 1965 patent indicates that he proposed applying an AC voltage across the high-K dielectric of his thrust-producing device.
He may have gotten a clue to energizing his dielectric with a nonlinear AC field potential as a result of studying the results of his Paris vacuum-chamber experiments.
Observing that the test rotor in those experiments developed a very high electrogravitic thrust during each of its spontaneous electron discharges, it would have been natural for him to steer his research in the direction of duplicating these high-thrust conditions by rapidly charging and discharging his vertical thrust electrokinetic apparatus with a high-frequency oscillating field.

Brown’s 1965 patent suggests that a cyclically varying potential would repeatedly establish a nonlinear field gradient along the length of the dielectric member and increase the resulting thrust:

In applying potentials to these various embodiments, it has been found that the rate at which the potential is applied often influences the thrust.
This is especially true where dielectric members of high dielectric constant are used and the charging time is a factor.
In such cases, the field gradient changes as the charge is built up.
.
.
.
One advantageous manner of applying potential is that of employing potentials which vary cyclically.
²⁰

In his patent, Brown proposed applying a high-voltage AC field in the megahertz radio frequency range to a hornlike device fitted with a conical dielectric (figure 3.8).
The small disc (29) at the apex of the dielectric was identified as a “half-wave radiator,” and the applied AC voltage was said to be of a frequency such that a half-wavelength spans the disc’s diameter.

Note that the saucers that Brown tested, which succeeded in levitating 110 to 125 percent of their own weight, also used a disc electrode attached to the tip of a central dielectric column.
Hence, these devices were essentially the same design as the microwave device pictured in figure 3.8, except that their positive electrode was curved rather than conical in shape and the disc antenna was somewhat larger.
So the dramatic lift Brown obtained in these experiments may have been because he was applying radio frequency AC in addition to the high-voltage DC bias potential.
In describing this experiment to Kitselman, Schaffranke, and Turman, Brown never mentioned that he was also using AC.
Perhaps this was the key to the practical application of his technology, and for that reason, he wished to keep that aspect proprietary.

In the case of the device shown in figure 3.2, whose canopy was 15 inches in diameter, the negative disc electrode would have been about 4 inches (i.e., 10 cm) in diameter.
In the absence of an attached dielectric, it would have been most efficiently excited at a frequency of around 1.5 gigahertz to radiate a 20-centimeter wavelength.
However, in this case, in which the same size disc is cemented to the apex of a dielectric cone, the dielectric changes the disc’s impedance so that the antenna would be driven more efficiently at a lower frequency, say of 750 megahertz, which would be in the UHF range.
^*9
This would radiate a proportionately longer free-space wavelength of 40 centimeters.
Provided that the negative disc electrode was spaced from the positively charged canopy by a quarter-wavelength distance (about 10 centimeters), the canopy (or horn) would act as a resonator cavity, allowing a 10-centimeter quarter-wavelength standing wave to build up across the two ends of its central dielectric.

Figure 3.8.
An electrokinetic apparatus proposed by Thomas Townsend Brown that used high-voltage AC to generate an electrogravitic thrust.
Numbers indicate the following: positive electrode in the form of a frustrated metallic cone (25); frustrated dielectric cone (27) containing semiconducting particles near its tip (28); negative electrode in the form of a disc serving as a half-wave radiator (29); direction of electrogravitic thrust (31).
(From Brown, U.S.
patent 3,187,206, figure 4)

Let us suppose that the DC potential bias applied across the capacitor dielectric was chosen to be -100 kilovolts and that the AC field amplitude was adjusted to have a comparable value of 95 kilovolts and was applied so that the negative electrode potential was left free to oscillate relative to the grounded positive electrode.
The net potential across the capacitor, due to the summed AC and DC potentials, then would have varied between -5 kilovolts and -195 kilovolts.
As explained in the next chapter, this repeating unipolar oscillation would have generated a virtual-charge gradient across the dielectric that would have produced an oscillating unidirectional electrogravitic thrust on the apparatus.

The electrogravitic thrust would have been stronger than that achieved with DC energization alone because with such a rapid charging cycle, the dielectric would have had insufficient time to appreciably polarize in response to each voltage onset.
Hence, the dielectric’s opposing electrogravitic dipole moment would have been unable to build up sufficiently to cancel out the imposed electrogravitic field, allowing a maximal thrust to be exerted throughout the dielectric.
Unlike Brown’s gravitator, described in chapter 1, whose forward thrust progressively diminished after being initially energized, the oscillating potential applied across his electrokinetic thruster would have caused it to receive a series of rapidly recurring forward thrusts.

Brown’s patent suggests that the half cycle period of the AC voltage oscillation applied to the asymmetrical capacitor’s negative electrode was comparable to the time taken for this voltage change to travel across the dielectric to the capacitor’s positive electrode.
Under such a circumstance, the applied oscillation would increase the nonlinearity of the field spanning the dielectric and thereby boost the thrust arising from both the electrogravitic effect and the unbalanced electrostatic force effect.

There is another aspect to this AC energizing that Brown did not discuss in his patent—namely, that a phase-locked stationary wave pattern would have formed beneath his disc and stored up the energy of each AC cycle.
This would have created an electric and gravity potential gradient in the space around the disc that would have progressively increased over time, eventually becoming far greater than the gradient applied during any individual cycle.
Tesla observed this effect in his experiments with high-voltage, high-frequency shock discharges.
This important effect is well known to “black-project” engineers, who term it “field-induced soliton phenomenon.”
It is explored further in chapter 8, in the discussion of phase-conjugate resonance.

Rapid recurrent charging of the dielectric should also improve the thrust arising from unbalanced electrostatic forces.
As the capacitor dielectric polarizes, the charges on the capacitor plates become partially neutralized by charges of opposite polarity supplied by the adjacent dielectric, so the residual thrust on the capacitor would tend to decline.
By charging the plates quickly and repetitively, without any polarity reversal, the electrostatic thrust could be maintained at a maximal level.

3.5 • ELECTROGRAVITICS GOES BLACK

When Brown began working on this AC electrogravitic resonator concept, he may have been getting too close to something that governments considered top secret.
Around 1959, there was a substantial change in openness about antigravity research.
Earlier, during the mid-1950s, aerospace companies did not hide from the public the fact that they were conducting electrogravitics R&D, although they generally kept the particulars of their own work confidential.
For example, an article by A.
V.
Cleaver, from Rolls-Royce’s Aero Engine Division, indicates that as of the beginning of 1957, secrecy had not been imposed but might be imminent.
The article states, “The fact that there appears to be no very high security rating attached to it in itself suggests that definite results have not yet been achieved; if, and when, they are one would expect the usual ‘clamp’ to be tightened down.”
²¹

Openness continued, even into the early part of 1958, with the subject inspiring heated discussion at a January aeronautical science meeting in New York.
Just prior to the event,
Product Engineering
magazine carried the following news brief:

E
LECTROGRAVITICS:
S
CIENCE
OR DAYDREAM?

A few weeks from now, at a special session of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences (New York City, Jan.
27–31), a group of dedicated men will discuss what some people label pure science-fiction, but others believe is an attainable goal.
The subject: electrogravitics—the science of controlling gravity.

After exploring various notions of gravity, the article finally concludes:

Perhaps British aeronautical engineer A.
V.
Cleaver is right in insisting that if any anti-gravity device is to be developed the first thing needed is a new principle in fundamental physics—not just a new invention or application of known principles.
Nevertheless, the Air Force is encouraging research in electrogravitics, and many companies and individuals are working on the problem.
²²

After the meeting,
Business Week
magazine reported the following:

If anyone had predicted 10 years ago that a cross-section of the nation’s top physicists, aeronautical engineers, and mathematicians would be fighting for standing room to hear the chaste theory of gravity seriously challenged, he would have been labeled sun-stroked, senile, or worse.

.
.
.
At an opening day meeting of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences in New York last week, however, the impossible became possible.
In record numbers—in a rush that stacked up scientists 20 deep at every entrance to the Sheraton-Astor’s North Ballroom—the elite of research came to hear what it is that has reawakened scientific interest in the possibility of doing something about gravitation.

What has happened, they wanted to know, that has caused major aircraft companies as well as the government and various universities, to start serious inquiries into the possibility of controlling gravity?
How do the recent discoveries in antiproton research fit into the picture?
And even more importantly, how accurate are the reports (circulated by Tass) that Russian scientists hope to turn up some sort of machinery to cancel or modify the force of gravity sometime during 1958?
²³

Business Week
went on to list an impressive array of companies and institutions backing gravity research, companies such as the Glenn Martin Company, Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Sperry-Rand Corporation, the Army Transportation Research and Development Command, Princeton University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of California.
Hughes Aircraft should also be added to the list of organizations that by 1958 had become involved in antigravity research.
^24,
 
25

Yet this climate of openness began to change very soon after, as companies became increasingly silent about their involvement in gravity research.
In the July 1959 issue of
Canadian Aviation
, Charles Carew wrote, “The author has not been able to determine whether the Glenn L.
Martin Corp.
has discontinued its antigravity program or made a significant discovery which has elevated it to super-top-secret category, since no information about the project has recently been available.”
²⁶

This indicated that Glenn Martin had made a decided turnabout from its unusually outspoken support of electrogravitics, evident in its vice president’s statements to the press in 1955.
Most probably, antigravity research had begun to be funded by the military and as a result had continued under a cloak of secrecy.
This could explain the difficulty Brown had been encountering in promoting his ideas.
During this period, he had been slowly and patiently giving demonstrations for the Pentagon and key aerospace companies in the United States, hoping to generate some interest in his work, but success continually eluded him.
In
The Philadelphia Experiment,
Moore wrote that “such interest as he was able to generate seemed to melt away almost as fast as it developed—almost as if someone (or perhaps something?) was working against him.”
²⁷

As mentioned earlier, beginning in 1957 Brown was invited to work on a consulting basis with Agnew Bahnson Jr.
to investigate electrogravitic propulsion.
Together with Dr.
Frank King, they had explored methods of applying AC fields to electrified discs.
An examination of Bahnson’s laboratory notebook shows that on January 5, 1958, he had suggested to Brown a variation of the AC electric field concept.
²⁸
Bahnson’s idea was to place a parabolic metal grid between a positively charged parabolic lift canopy and a negatively charged sphere, as shown in figure 3.9.
Then he applied an oscillating high-voltage field between the lift canopy and the negative sphere.
He chose a megahertz frequency for this oscillating field that would establish a resonant stationary wave between the two electrodes.
He hypothesized that this electrostatic stationary wave would somehow store the energy of the applied AC field in an “ether-like” energy reservoir residing in the space immediately around the test device.
He felt that this resonant condition might allow the latent energy in this stationary field to be used with a minimum of power consumption.
So here we see Bahnson hitting upon this same key idea of a field-induced soliton phenomenon.

Bahnson also described the use of alternating current fields in a U.S.
patent that he filed in September 1964 on an electrogravitic levitation device (see figure 3.10).
²⁹
The data in his patent indicate that his test rig had developed a thrust of 100 grams at 150 kilovolts, with thrust increasing exponentially according to the 2.6 power of voltage.
This performance was comparable to the levitating rigs that Brown had tested, which again leads us to suspect that Brown was using AC to get the impressive results that his friend Kitselman had witnessed.

Figure 3.9.
An electrogravitic lift device suggested by Bahnson.
(After C.
Yost, Electric Spacecraft Journal, May/June 1991, vol.
8)

Shortly after Bahnson filed his patent, tragedy struck.
He was killed under somewhat unusual circumstances, when his private airplane reportedly struck a high-tension wire.
³⁰
His patent, which was issued in December 1965, was assigned to his estate.
His heirs, having no interest in further developing Bahnson’s antigravity work, sold his patents to another company.

Brown’s electrokinetic apparatus and his electric generator patents (3,187,206 and 3,196,296) were issued several months before Bahnson’s, in June and July 1965.
Brown’s patents were assigned to the Electrokinetics Corporation, a company that Philadelphia businessman Martin Decker had formed in collaboration with Brown to develop Brown’s electrokinetic devices.
The company was located in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, where Decker was operating an industrial compound.
This was only eight miles from the General Electric Space Center in King of Prussia, where Brown had conducted vacuum chamber experiments in 1959.
Brown had consulted for Electrokinetics since the early 1960s and had received a considerable quantity of stock in the company in exchange for the assignment of his patent rights.
In his biography of Brown, Schatzkin writes that in the summer of 1964, Decker had told Brown that his Electrokinetics stock had become worthless.
³¹
Nevertheless, the company must have continued to function, as patents of Brown’s issued as late as 1967 are listed as being assigned to Electrokinetics.
Some mystery appears to surround this company’s circumstances.

Figure 3.10.
An electrogravitic thrust-producing device as illustrated in
Bahnson’s 1965 patent.

Electrokinetics Corporation kept its electrogravitics work veiled in secrecy because in 1968, in a letter to Turman, Brown wrote, “The company to which I serve as consultant has not released some of the information you have requested and I am very much at a loss to know what to say.”
³²
This shroud of secrecy over Brown’s work apparently continued into the 1980s because in February 1982, responding to an Illinois gentleman inquiring about the status of his work, he wrote, “I regret to advise you that electrogravitic research has been taken over in its entirety by a California corporation which has imposed secrecy—at least until their investigations are completed.
No further publication or release of information is permitted, possibly until next year.”
³³
Was this California corporation Lockheed Martin, or was it Hughes Aircraft?
Brown did not say.

After his brief consulting work for Electrokinetics in the early 1960s, Brown went into semiretirement, and by 1970 had dropped most of his applied electrogravitic work to busy himself with research on petroelectricity, or so it had seemed.
Brown died of natural causes in 1985.
Until the time of his death, details about the use of pulsating fields in his electrogravitics research were not forthcoming.
Classification restrictions or concerns for trade secrecy presumably discouraged him from openly saying much about this aspect of his work.

Moore’s biography of Brown paints a picture of someone who was ahead of his time yet not understood by most of his colleagues, of an inventor who was confronted by one discouragement after another in his attempts to secure government funding and who finally gave up electrogravitic propulsion research at the end of the 1960s.
However, one source close to the Brown family indicates that this was not the case, that Brown was being kept in the loop of the secret aerospace research he had catalyzed and that the switch to petroelectricity research was primarily a cover.
The public exposure he had received in the past due to media attention to his electric disc technology would have made him a potential security threat.
Thus it is understandable that when the military began seriously funding his ideas, the work would have been contracted to a large aerospace company, with Brown being allowed to consult in private as long as he kept quiet about his involvement.